Time Inc.’s CEO Aims to Unify Print and Online Fiefdoms

Time Inc. CEO Laura Lang aims to give customers the ability to advertise across all 21 of Time Inc.’s magazines, both on the Web and in print, potentially reaching an audience of 127 million people in one fell swoop. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Sept. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Time Inc. Chief Executive Officer
Laura Lang, hired last year to revive the struggling magazine
publisher, is forging a plan to unify its long-sparring
online and print fiefdoms.

Lang wants to give customers the ability to advertise across
all 21 of Time Inc.’s magazines, both on the Web and in print,
potentially reaching an audience of 127 million people in one
fell swoop. That’s a break from the previous strategy, where the
company typically suggested doing marketing campaigns via
specific brands -- say, the print edition of People or Time.

Time Inc., Time Warner Inc.’s worst-performing division, is
grappling with sluggish demand for advertising and a shift to
the Internet, where ads command lower rates than traditional
print campaigns. In the first half of this year, the publisher’s
ad sales dropped 6 percent to $855 million from a year earlier,
while subscription revenue fell 7 percent to $581 million.

“We just need to be wherever people are -- sometimes you
need print, sometimes digital,” Lang, 56, said in an interview
from her office in New York. “Advertisers I’ve met with have
all said the same thing: ‘I love your print product, but find a
way to let me do it with other channels.’”

Previous efforts to boost online-advertising revenue were
hampered by a print staff that didn’t want to relinquish
valuable contacts to a separate sales team, according to people
familiar with the matter. Another complication: The websites of
the magazines were once managed by AOL Inc., which was spun off
in 2009.

New Training

Lang -- a former advertising executive who led Digitas, a
digital-ad agency owned by Publicis Groupe SA -- is appealing to
advertisers accustomed to the approach taken by Google Inc. and
Yahoo! Inc. The Internet companies entice customers by promising
to reach a certain set of users, regardless of what specific
websites they’re visiting. Likewise, Time Inc. wants advertisers
to target demographics across their publications, rather than
readers of individual magazines.

“We’ll now be able to deliver audiences like anyone else,
but we also have the best content,” Lang said. “And very few
can offer both.”

Buying Content

The strategy also involves linking Time Inc.’s editorial
efforts more closely to its advertising sales. A consumer-goods
company selling beauty or health products, for example, will now
be able take fashion layouts from one of Time Inc.’s magazines
such as InStyle and publish them in a Facebook Inc. news feed.
Or it could post parts of the layout to its Twitter Inc.
followers -- essentially purchasing use of the content.

“Our clients have been clamoring for that kind of content
flexibility,” said George Janson, managing partner at WPP Plc’s
GroupM, which buys media space for advertisers. The popularity
of Facebook and Twitter has created an incentive for advertisers
to produce or purchase their own stories, something they often
aren’t equipped to handle.

Any Time Inc. content shared this way would be branded as
coming from the magazines, such as InStyle, Lang said. Articles
also won’t be produced at the behest of advertisers, Lang said.
Given the depth of Time Inc.’s editorial well, sales executives
should be able to find articles or features relevant to any
campaign, she said.

Tablet Readers

The company also plans to more aggressively market its
tablet and smartphone readers to advertisers. While the
publisher’s mobile audience is relatively small -- about 17.1
million people a month -- Lang plans to bolster those numbers
via partnerships with other services.

The company has struck a deal with Apple Inc. to sell into
the iAd mobile network, according to documents obtained by
Bloomberg News. Time Inc. declined to comment on the agreement.

Time Inc.’s stable of publications include some of the
world’s best-known magazines, such as Sports Illustrated,
Fortune and Entertainment Weekly. Still, Time Inc.’s annual
sales and profit growth have trailed those of the parent
company’s television and film operations since the AOL spinoff.

Bloomberg News and Bloomberg Businessweek compete with
Time Inc.'s publications.

Time Inc. has historically functioned as a collection of
feudal states, both in the editorial and sales departments.
Sales managers would compete against ad executives from sister
titles for the same account and power struggles between
magazines were common, according to people with knowledge of the
company’s operations.

Griffin Ousted

Lang was hired by Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes last November
to replace Jack Griffin, who had clashed with other executives.
Griffin’s “leadership style and approach didn’t mesh with Time
Inc. and Time Warner,” Bewkes said in a memo when Griffin left.

Lang’s collegial management style impressed Bewkes, who was
in need of an executive who would bring a much-needed contrast
to Griffin’s tumultuous tenure, according to two executives with
direct knowledge of the matter.

She also has a consumer-products background, having worked
at Pfizer Inc., Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and Quaker Oats Co. She
graduated from Tufts University and has an MBA from the
University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.

As part of Lang’s extended listening tour when she first
joined the company, she met with Chief Revenue Officer Paul
Caine, a Time Inc. veteran. He outlined some of his ideas, which
eventually became the basis for the company’s new sales pitch.

“In the middle of our meeting I thought, ‘We should stop
talking right now and go out and just do all this,’” Lang said.
“Paul really is the architect of this strategy.”

Broader Impact

Despite the emphasis on online advertising, the strategy
doesn’t rely solely on the Internet to boost sales, Caine said.

“As the world’s largest publisher, it’s not about pivoting
more digitally -- it’s about enhancing our overall businesses,”
he said in an interview. “Print is still very critical.”

Time Inc.’s new audience approach comes at the right time,
said Page Thompson, CEO of Omnicom Media Group North America,
the media-services division of Omnicom Group. Making print
advertising more flexible and tying it to the Web is key to
helping it recover, he said.

“Print is starting to look more and more like digital, and
that is the real savior to the print world,” Thompson said in
an interview.

Other major publishers such as Hearst Corp., which owns
Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire magazines, also are seeking ways
to squeeze more revenue from digital media. Hearst Magazines
President David Carey has focused on increasing sales of tablet
magazine subscriptions, which now count close to 700,000 across
all its titles, he said in an interview.

E-Commerce Site

Carey has started to delve into e-commerce programs as
well. The company recently unveiled ShopBazaar, a website that
features apparel from the editorial pages of Harper’s Bazaar
magazine. The publisher forged a partnership with Saks Inc. to
sell the merchandise.

“We’re relaxing some of the long-held orthodoxies around
content and commerce and what you can do,” he said. “There are
a lot of opportunities in digital.”

At Time Inc., the company plans to capitalize on what many
advertisers sees as its most valuable asset: its database of 65
million print subscribers. The publisher is combining its lists
of online and offline readers to make it easier for advertisers
to target consumers.

“That has been the missing link -- connecting the digital
and offline databases,” Omnicom’s Thompson said.

Toyota Motor Corp., one of Time Inc.’s biggest advertisers,
has signed on to test the new capabilities. The publisher’s
readers are valuable targets, said Dionne Colvin, national media
marketing manager for Toyota’s U.S. division.